Tag Archives: Education

The Faust in faith schools

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The BBC reported on some research on faith schools this week. LSE researchers supposedly found that faith schools got better results where there was competition for pupils. This isnt exactly surprising, league tables of exam results being so crucial now. Any school that needs to attract pupils has got to show it gets good results – something of a circular process.

This competition thing confirms that a lot of people aren’t sending their kids to “faith schools” because of faith.

It makes me think about the concept of selling your soul. Parents are selling their children’s souls to the highest bidder – the religion that can offer the best GCSE and A level results wins the prize. These must be the cheapest Faustian deals ever recorded. Didn’t the going rate used to be lordship of the earth or eternal life or something of that magnitude?

There were two interesting paragraphs, one encouraging and one depressing.

The research is published as the ATL teachers’ union attacks faith schools for a lack of accountability – and calls for them not to “discriminate” in their admissions process.

Conservative leader David Cameron and Shadow Chancellor George Osborne have recently said they intend to send their children to faith schools – a choice also taken by Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The first paragraph indicates some opposition to the apparent increasingly widespread supportfor religious schools, in our generally pretty godfree society. The second one shows how politicians – who can certainly afford to send their children to the most sought-after secular private schools -feel that it’s a better vote – winner to choose the religious option.

They know that people resent them buying their kids a “better” education. So they don’t want to be seen to send their kids to Eton any more. But, they are not going to risk their precious little Cressidas and Julians in the target-driven qualification factories that all parties are keen to turn state schools into. The faith school thing gets them off the hook, plus it hints at hidden depths of religious belief and morality.

That is, they are painting themselves of people of such deep faith that they won’t risk their children’s moral upbringing in non-religious state or private schools.

They must feel that this will make us trust them more.

It just makes them look even shadier and more hypocritical.

Foreign languages at 7

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There has been a mild tv fuss about language learning in primary schools. Foreign languages are apparently no longer compulsory in secondary schools, as the difficulty meant that targets for passed GCSEs couldn’t be met.

(Surely, it would be better to give all kids 5 GCSE passes on starting secondary school, then they could learn difficult subjects, like sciences and languages, without everybody worrying about schools falling in the league tables because kids are studying difficult lessons)

I can’t see why this has caused a stir. It seems so obvious that kids should learn as many languages as they can while their minds are receptive. It is truly embarrassing for us English people when we see other Europeans can usually speak half a dozen languages perfectly, while we struggle to translate the simplest order for a loaf.

If the only current secondary school pupils to study a second or third language are the determined tiny minority, our present dire levels of linguistic prowess will seem like polyglot heaven in a few years time. Let’s hope that the littlest children can start to make up for this.

Dawkins links to anti-faith schools e-petition

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Well this is two of our favourite blog topics in one, so I couldn’t let it pass.

On Richard Dawkins’ own website, there is a link to an e-petition against faith schools of any kind in the UK.

I know it will get a patronising refusal to pay any attention but I still think it’s worth adding your name to it, if you are a UK resident and you have a problem with paying tax to segregate kids by religion….

Although, it’ s probably fair to warn you. Google your name when the petition’s closed and you’ll probably find it with the topic of the petition and a few names of people who signed before or after you.

If you live in a notably faith-obsessed or evn fundamentalist community, you might find that your local priest or imam starts to take an unhealthy interest in your opinions. OK. It’s not exactly going to be on a par with the sort of comebacks that Kareem experienced in Egypt. But education can become a real battle-ground. “Give me a child before the age of seven”, and so on.

(Dawkins’ own blog seems self-evidently worth looking at, and I’ll probably come back to discussing it soon.)

Casual racism exposed

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The uproar over Celebrity Brother is fascinating in itself. It’s obviously succeeded in dragging back attention to a tv show that can yield several degress of watchability to the test card.

THere was a great blog from TW here about the Big Brother fiasco.  (http://www.whydontyou.org.uk/blog/2007/01/17/racism-on-big-brother/) It says it all but I still feel like adding my proverbial tuppenorth.

I have actually watched one of these programmes. It does indeed reek of casual mindless racism. I  also watched a very old Celebrity Big Brother series (both in someone else’s house, I insist on adding, for the salke of my self-respect) in which  Chris Eubank, a black boxer,  was subjected to the same sort of behaviour, from people who were at least less blatantly moronic as these appalling women, no apparent outcry. Chris eubank was the first person ever to  to be evicted from CBB.

Ironically, in both cases the contestants who were subjected to this racially based exclusion behaved with an almost incredible degree of  forbearance. Chris Eubank seemed the only person in his house with any idea of a separation between a stage persona and a therapy session. He was calm and witty at all times. He wore silly outfits as a public-pleasing act. It didn’t work. He was obviously too sane for the house and must have struck a nerve with the largely moronic sector of the public who actually spend money on voting for these things.

These bitchy “celeb” women are not just morons. They were clearly threatened by a woman who is naturally beautiful,  seems normally intelligent. and appears to have done something (acting) to become a “celeb.”  The attackers have no claim on being known other than to have  copped off with a footballer to win a beauty contest or to have exhibit ed their awe-inspiring stupidity on national television.

However, their attitudes are not unique. Jade Goody’s boyfriend was  casually racist enough for a dozen wags in the bit that i had the misfortune to watch.  He didn’t even have the excuse of being a comically outclassed female.

I take issue with any approach that involves pretending that this casual racism is unique to these people and that hiding it will make it go away. If anything, this trash tv has done a service by showing the truly repulsive inature of British racism, which is unfortunately not confined to the people at the back of the queue when the mental and spititual gifts were being given out.

The very media that are now pillorying  a few backward  girls for giving the game away are the ones that are creating a climate of division. A trawl through the BBC’s own blog site about a woman wearing a burkha left me stunned with shock at the casually racist content of almost all the posts. 

Clearly our anti-racism strategies aren’t working. With apologies for pontificating, I’ll take this up in the next blog.